Judge Warns Trump: Sanctions Next in BBC Deposition Fight
A federal judge has warned President Donald Trump that sanctions are coming if he keeps dodging his deposition in the $10 billion defamation lawsuit he filed against the BBC. In a brief order issued Friday in Miami, U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjolique A. Lett admonished the president for his lack of participation, writing: “The court has admonished plaintiff for his lack of participation to no avail. Going forward, the court expects strict compliance with its order, the failure of which will lead to sanctions,” according to Bloomberg Law.
The order is a response to a BBC motion to compel Trump to sit for a deposition he has tried to postpone. His lawyers cancelled the session, which had been scheduled for Friday, citing “other matters of national importance” and proposed pushing his testimony to January 2027, after the discovery deadline.
Eight months of discovery, no date for the star witness
The BBC’s lawyers told the court they have spent nearly eight months in discovery, taken seven BBC witness depositions, and still have no schedule for the most central figure in the case: the plaintiff himself. The BBC has produced 9,371 documents totaling 114,266 pages. Trump’s side has produced 20 documents, all of them BBC-provided or public internet material.
Lett’s order also notes that the BBC has been forced to file five separate appeals because of Trump’s disregard of the court’s discovery procedures. The pattern, she wrote, justifies putting sanctions on the table. A response is due October 22, with a hearing the same day.
The suit behind the standoff
Trump sued the BBC in December 2025 over a Panorama documentary that spliced together two separate sections of his January 6, 2021 speech, making it appear he had explicitly urged supporters to march on the Capitol. He is seeking $5 billion for defamation and another $5 billion under Florida’s deceptive trade practices law. The broadcaster apologized for the edit and removed its top executives but denied that it defamed him.
The timing has drawn attention. Trump spent Friday campaigning in Georgia for Senate candidate Mike Collins and gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson, then headed to Mar-a-Lago, per TheWrap’s reporting. With the trial set for February 2027 and the midterms dominating his schedule, the court is signaling that the calendar is no longer his to keep. The judge’s warning turns a campaign-season legal fight into a direct test of whether a sitting president can be compelled to answer questions under oath in his own lawsuit.
